In the field of regulated power supplies, a so-called “linear regulator” employs, inter alia, an operational amplifier serving as an error amplifier, a pass device element and a compensation network in order to maintain stability of an output voltage with changes to current demands of a load coupled to the linear regulator. In this respect, as an integrated circuit, such a circuit occupies a relatively large amount of die space, particularly due to use of a physically large capacitor employed by the compensation network. The circuit therefore constitutes a complex system that requires careful consideration of component values in order to achieve an optimum compromise between phase margin, gain margin, DC gain of the circuit, and/or Gain Bandwidth and other component value characteristics, such as current load, capacitive load and Effective Series Resistance (ESR) of the circuit.
Additionally, such circuits require the specific inclusion of a current limiting circuit to protect the linear regulator circuit as well as the load. The current limiting circuit is typically a closed-loop arrangement requiring another operational amplifier and another compensation network. For the same reasons already stated in relation to the linear regulator circuit, the current limiting circuit requires careful configuration and occupies valuable die space.